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UW Writer in Residence Receives European Literary Award

January 30, 2012 — Rattawut Lapcharoensap, University of Wyoming MFA Program in
Creative Writing Eminent Writer in Residence, is the recipient of a major five-year
European literary grant from the Abraham Woursell Foundation. He recently
accepted the prize in Vienna, Austria.

"In his last will, Woursell decreed that the University of
Vienna should give stipends of $50,000 a year to young authors to enable them
to pursue their career without financial difficulties," according to the University
of Vienna.

Author of the best-selling collection
"Sightseeing," Lapcharoensap is in his second year in UW's MFA
Program in Creative Writing and is supported with the Wyoming Excellence
endowment. During his UW residency, Lapcharoensap has taught a graduate fiction
workshop, visited university classes and met individually with UW students.

Born in Chicago and raised in Bangkok, Lapcharoensap studied
writing at Cornell University and the University of Michigan.
"Sightseeing" was selected for the National Book Foundation's "5
Under 35" program, won the Asian American Literary Award and also was
short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award.

"'Sightseeing' is as exuberant and effective a story
collection as I have read in years," says Alyson Hagy, a UW MFA Program
faculty member. "If you combine Rattawut's fiction with his reputation as
a generous and curious teacher, and his energetic explorations of several
cultures, you come up with a young writer who is a perfect fit for Wyoming's
innovative creative writing program."

Lapcharoensap also was awarded $50,000 from the Mrs. Giles
Whiting Foundation for writers of exceptional talent and promise in early
career. He was among 10 writers nationwide to receive the 2010 Whiting Writers'
Awards.

"Lapcharoensap writes with a depth of emotion, of tenderness
really, and fluent descriptive detail," said the Whiting selectors.
"We like the access he provides to a world we know nothing about ... and
the way he manages to maintain an edgy tone without being off-putting or
overdoing it. He isn't interested in condescending to the reader, as the
material might invite him to. And we
admire his fidelity to the short form in these stories -- he does not stretch
material that should not be stretched."